Our main floor guest bathroom was definitely filed in the “rooms-in-serious-need-of-a-makeover” folder. Everything builder’s grade that can be put in a bathroom was in this room – the hardware, the faucet, the lighting, the floors, the cabinet, and so on. When we bought the house, I remember thinking, Ooo, it’s a blank canvas! We can do anything with it. And yes, it truly is a blank canvas. The only problem is, the entire house was a blank canvas, and we simply couldn’t tackle everything at once. Somehow, this sad little bathroom didn’t get a ton of attention until recently when I decided to give it a mini-makeover to tide us over until we can decide what we really want to do with it. So here’s the before:
Here’s the other side, though not much will change over there. (P.S. Sorry that the toilet lid was up! But you’re probably blinded by the other horrible features in here and maybe didn’t notice that lid.)
The first thing we decided to change was that light fixture. All of our research indicated that this would be a simple swap! Until we popped the fixture off and found this mess of a hole behind the mounting hardware. Unfortunately, the hole would not be covered up by the new fixture. We spent the day learning how to patch large drywall holes (short answer: make a bigger, square hole and fit a fresh piece of drywall of the same size in the new hole). Once the hole was repaired, sanded and painted, installing the new light fixture was easy breezy.
After swapping out the light fixture, we painted the walls a soft sage color (which doesn’t photograph well at all, by the way). I wanted to go with a light neutral since this room lacks a window and therefore doesn’t get any natural light. We installed a new towel bar, a shelf and I added a few accessories and art, but it still looked blah because of that vanity! It was just so…orange. And the faucet needed to be more fun. 
The vanity and the vanity top were in good shape, so I decided to just paint the cabinet a grayish-green and add some simple knobs and a new toilet paper holder. I followed these directions for painting the cabinet. It was super easy, only took one weekend (due to the drying time), and I think it made a huge difference! The Sherwin-Williams paint color I used on the cabinet is called Chatroom.
I also painted the quarter-round to match the baseboards. I’m not sure why it was ever orange oak in the first place. I still need to find a new mirror, and we also plan to add crown molding. Eventually I think we’ll gut the whole thing and do some really nice upgrades, but for now, it’s so much better.
Oh and here’s the new faucet! It’s not the most expensive one by any means since this is just an in-the-meantime fix, but I think it’s more fun than what was in there before. 
Since this is my first bathroom makeover project I went with a really safe monochromatic palette, but I think my next in-the-meantime steps will be to find the perfect mirror and also add in some color with different accessories/art. Maybe something similar to one of these palettes – autumn hues, or bright punchy colors with the soft neutrals. 
Oh and I have another bathroom to tackle in the same way, so more on bathroom updates soon!
